I have given up, and tomorrow, I am sending it back, and here's why;
The
BIOS is unforgivable, the board should never have been released in that state, and there are many problems with it, not just the freezing issue.
The heat from the PWMs when using an overvolted quad is ridiculous, and something that I would think that a lot of people do not want, or need in their case. Mine was easily giving off 5x80c during priming with just under 1.5 volts, with a 92mm fan blowing directly on the
PWM heatsink (something which couldnt be done while the board was in a case). I have seen the PWMs hit 112c on occasion as well, which is quite frankly, ridiculous.
Abit fanatics would argue that the digital PWMs are rated for much higher temps, so everything is fine and dandy, but that isnt the case, the PWMs might be fine, but the heat still has to go somewhere. Asus, seemed to have perfected the
PWM area on the Maximus, and that ran almost cool to the touch, even with silly voltage.
Stability - the board just isnt stable. Sure, you can crank up the voltage to achieve stability, but why would anyone want to be hitting 1.55v+ for 3.6Ghz, when you know that your
CPU will do it in a *decent* board at 1.4v or less? Add the heat from your highly overvolted
CPU, to the 5x white hot PWMs and you have yourself a replacement for your central heating boiler.
The bundle - The bundle is a bit of a sore point. The items that come with this board, are reminiscent of what you would get with something like a sub 50.00 board.
It doesnt like having a keyboard attached, or a
USB stick - great news for people with a keyboard
Looks like it came shipped with a beta
BIOS, which happens to be the latest
BIOS on the Abit
FTP as well.
I really wanted to like this board, and I did for a couple of hours, but the problems outweigh any benefits, by a long margin, and as a result, it is a pig to use.
I have also been advised that its usually like this when Abit launch a motheboard, and not to expect
BIOS releases to be flooding onto the
FTP for at least a few weeks. If that is the case, then, by the time that the board is useable, we will probably have a new chipset and new boards on the market.
Hope that helps
I have a Q6600 2.4ghz Quad Core.
), so that's what I've ended up with, and thats why I was looking forward to the Abit 
Linear Mode
